Welcome to the March 2025 newsletter for the research software community at The University of Sheffield, featuring news, opportunities, events and training for you.
| 2025-03-12: TALK | Software, Supporting Staff, and Research: Enhancing Collaboration |
| 2025-03-13: TALK | Managing Environments for Scientists Who Code |
| 2025-03-19: TALK | Quarto for Python and R |
Applying the FAIR Principle to Computation workflows, Wilkinson, R. S. et al.
Unveiling the report findings from IOI’s study on the state of open research software infrastructure. Jerry Sellanga & Emmy Tsang
The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers - Microsoft Research. Hao-Ping (Hank), Lee et al; Proceedings of the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), on behalf of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), invites researchers and innovators from across the UK to express their interest in accessing large-scale AI compute, the new AI Research Resource (AIRR), in particular, the Isambard AI (Bristol) and Dawn compute services (Cambridge). This call is for testing phase access as aspects of the service are still being developed and for at least Isambard AI the bulk of the GPU node capacity is yet to be brought online. AIRR workloads are likely to include (but will not be limited to) large language models (LLMs), big data analytics, and data-driven predictions and equation discovery in areas such as climate research, green fusion energy development and healthcare.
UKRI/DSIT state that expressions of interest in testing phase access must include info on:
The Research and Innovation IT team in IT Services and the Research Software Engineering (RSE) teams are supporting and coordinating applications, and sharing knowledge to increase the success of applications. Not only will we provide technical input into applications, but we will apply experience of other access calls to strengthen your application and ensure it has the best chance of success. We can also provide technical, collaborative support to projects once access to AIRR has been granted. IT Services and the RSE team have prior experience of offering such support to TUoS users of the Bede and JADE2 HPC/GPU systems.
The Open Research Prize recognises and celebrates the excellent work University of Sheffield researchers are doing to make their research discoverable and reusable by a wider audience.
Open practices strive to make the processes and outputs of research transparent and freely accessible whenever possible, and are crucial to ensuring the integrity and reliability of research. Open research also supports impact activities and allows the wider public to benefit from research.
Applicants are asked to demonstrate their engagement in open research in one or more of the following areas:
Publishing research outputs (including data, software, protocols, monographs…) using open licences to promote broad dissemination; Participating in new open publication and peer review models - for example, by posting preprints, publishing in a journal which uses open peer review, formally pre-registering a study design, or publishing a registered report; Reusing existing open research outputs and repurposing these using open methods; Teaching open research practices or advocating for open research in the community; Using open and participatory methods including open notebooks, co-production, participatory action research and citizen science; Disseminating research using accessible outputs such as blogposts, podcasts, animations, infographics, interactive applications and more.
The Software Sustainability Institute is running the Research Software Maintenance Fund, supported by the UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure programme, offering £4.8 million to support and sustain key research software, ensuring it remains reliable and accessible. This initiative will not only fund vital pieces of the research ecosystem, but help us understand how we can effectively provide the support that research software needs to reduce technical debt and grow engagement.
Funding from the Research Software Maintenance Fund can be used to support and maintain existing research software or sustain a team responsible for multiple software tools. However, it is not intended for developing entirely new software.
The scheme includes two types of awards: up to £500k for two years and up to £150k for one year, with multiple funding rounds between 2025 and 2027. The two year grants will only be available in the first round in 2025.
This training curriculum offers a modular programme to support researchers in applying FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles and open research practices to their research software. The programme is aimed at researchers, including PhDs and postgraduate research students at the University of Sheffield, who create code (whether a few scripts or something more substantial) as part of their research and who want to make their research more open by applying the FAIR principles to their software or simply want to become more confident in the research code they are writing.
To find out what the FAIR principles are and why they are crucial to make your research more open, you can watch the introductory talk by Head of Research Software Engineering, Romain Thomas, Better software for Better research: Introduction to the FAIR2 for Research Software training programme. You can also view the slides for this talk.
The FAIR2 for research software training programme has been developed by the RSE, Data Analytics Service and Library teams and launched in October. The full syllabus is now live and places on upcoming courses can be booked via MyDevelopment (requires login). The programme will be continuing over the next few months, with the following courses now scheduled:
Check for advertised RSE and RSE-adjacent roles at the RSE society’s vacancies board.
The DRPS community is a group for people that support researchers in carrying out research in the digital age. Meetings are held monthly, with discussions around events, training and opportunities related to the field. You can join the google group to stay informed. Next meeting: Wednesday 26th March 2025 at 2pm.
LunchBytes are short talks from the research community on research software, data, and infrastructure.
Due to capacity within the RSE team, there was very limited LunchBytes content over the past academic year. This should be changing soon, a new coordinator for LunchBytes has been found (Research IT’s Farhad Allian), with a plan to reboot these lunchtime seminars in the spring semester.
More information will be coming out over the coming months, so sign up to the RSE mailing list if you’d like to learn more about research software and associated practices, or get in contact with Farhad if you would like to share what you know at an upcoming session!
Why not come to a Code Clinic? We’re keen to help you.
Code Clinics are fortnightly supported sessions run by the RSE team and IT Services’ Research IT team. They are open to anyone at TUoS writing code for research to get help with programming problems and general advice on best practices.
At each session, members of the RSE and/or Research IT teams will be available to review code, advise, troubleshoot, and suggest ways to improve your computational workflows.
HPC Drop-In sessions are providing assistance with HPC related user issues such as challenges in scaling an application from desktop to supercomputer. We are considering extending the number of our sessions to two or three weekly. These interactive sessions could provide a better interface with our users than our non-interactive ticketing system. These sessions are advertised on the HPC mailing list.
Alongside the HPC Drop-In sessions, Research IT are also running one to one consultations to solve in depth user specific problems. These consultations can be booked via our webpage. If you are interested please visit the following link: https://students.sheffield.ac.uk/it-services/research.
The Sheffield RSE Team aims to collaborate with you to help improve your research software. They can provide dedicated staff to ensure that you can deliver excellent research software engineering on your research projects.
Research IT directly supports research, both academic and commercial. We provide large scale HPC systems, advice on everything from statistics to ML to data pipelines and training for both students and staff.
Working with academics, our staff are embedded within research groups on both long and short term engagements.
For queries relating to collaborating with the RSE team on projects: rse@sheffield.ac.uk
Information and access to JADE II and Bede.
Join our mailing list so as to be notified when we advertise talks and workshops by subscribing to this Google Group.
Queries regarding free research computing support/guidance should be raised via our Code clinic or directed to the University IT helpdesk.